Aged Pu-erh of the Day, Week, or Month

I've been thinking about this for a while that I don't think people tend to post about there experiences with aged pu-erh mainly posting about their experiences with immature sheng. When it comes to the aged or semi aged pu-erh available to us pitiable westerners with no tea markets to call our own there are very few comments or reviews out there. For one for one person to review all of the aged pu-erh available it would involve a substantial investment as aged pu-erh prices continue to soar. Afterall the reason we are all filling are closets, cupbords with bings building pumidors or securing storage space in Hong Kong is that we eventually hope to have aged tea one day right. I hope that this can be come a thread to review aged pu-erh around ten years or older available online and to post any experience we have with aged tea (available online or not).

I will start it off hopefully this won't fade into the back pages of tea chat.

Today I am drinking a 92-94 250 gram tuocha from Henry Trading Co in Hong Kong courtesy of Ge-Off-ree. This seems to have the same wrapper as The 80's bamboo wrapped tuocha from EOT and Houde. The flavor is also very similar with alittle more astringency.

For this session I used a 4.5 grams of loose tea including some dust from the bottom of my sample in a 75ml. aged zini 80's yixing.I gave it a 7 second rinse then started with a ten second brew. The first infusion a nice swirling of eun moo (clouds and Fog) apear on the surface of the cup always a good sign. The tea shows more green wood in it than the older version of the tea. The second infusion brought out the more mellow aged taste with just a touch of astringency in the front of the mouth to let you know this tea is not done aging. The third infusion (time still at around ten seconds) The tea keeps getting thicker and more rich. The flavor of this tea resides in the back of the throat. This tea did tend to fade allot faster than its older relatives but that could definitly be on account of the broken leaf used for the session.All around this is a great inexpensive aged sheng pu-erh the storage has been good leaving the tea aged with no offensive taste. It is not all that complex but it would be a decent aged tea that is complex enough to make it interesting and cheap enough to not worry about drinking it . Even the older versions available online are still about the cost of a latte from Starbucks per pot.

Yes that tea was cheap enough to drink whenever. I haven't tried the one from EOT so i can't compare but i have to agree that this one fades fairly quickly. I'm pretty sure Henry said it from Xiaguan too.

The tuocha at eot has been changed from being labeled as Xiaguan to yunnan Sheng Cha Ye Fen Gong Si. They taste very similar. But the older tuocha has better durability.

Today I drank a 97 orange mark "7542" although I kind of think. Its an orange in orange 7532. ive never seen a 7542 with this high of a content of buds. It has a very distinct herbal aroma in the first several infusions. This tea has a nice aged flavor full of "granny face powder" aromatic wood and some of the herbaciousness that is present in the aroma. The storage has been Really good leaving the tea still very vibrant but also with a good jump on maturity. My only real complaint with this tea is that it is slightly drying Which : could be the result of its storage or my pathetic excuse for gong fu cha. I may also have gotten a slightly different view of this tea given that the chunk that found its way into my yixing was taken from the bud heavy surface of the cake and I did not get much of the coarser grade leaf in the center of the cake. Either way I was very happy to be drinking this tea today.

This weekend at the 'southeastern tea meetup' We had a few semi-aged pu-erhs and one aged pu-erh.

We (Bears, Lerxst2112, me, and a gentleman named David) enjoyed a 2003 Changtai Yichanghao, a 2000 Sheng whose name I forgot, a mid 90's shuangjiang mengku sheng, and a 1950's sheng from Wisteria Tea House. Great tea, and fantastic company.

bryan_drinks_tea wrote:This weekend at the 'southeastern tea meetup' We had a few semi-aged pu-erhs and one aged pu-erh.

We (Bears, Lerxst2112, me, and a gentleman named David) enjoyed a 2003 Changtai Yichanghao, a 2000 Sheng whose name I forgot, a mid 90's shuangjiang mengku sheng, and a 1950's sheng from Wisteria Tea House. Great tea, and fantastic company.

How was the 90's Mengku? I've never seen or tasted anything by them made prior to 2001. I generally like most of their productions, so I'd be interested in knowing what there older cakes are like.

Great idea GN!I drank some 1970's Da Ye Loose leaf Raw Puerh from Essence of Tea last week. It comes to about $1 per gram. +-3g in 50 ml gaiwan.

It yielded nice old sheng notes. There was the slightly camphor/piney lingering aroma that reminded me of elements of EoT's '93 7542. Kinda of like a nice old mountain, worn down over the eons...! Easy to drink and very soothing. I look forward to future sessions with it.

What was the 50's sheng like? Ive only had two tea's that old a yancha and a lui an and both where spectacular.

Biohorn. Did you pick up on any Bulang type bitterness from this tea? When making that that tea strong I still get alittle bit of pleasant bitterness. like a more mature version of the Heng Li Chang Bulang.

gasninja wrote:Biohorn. Did you pick up on any Bulang type bitterness from this tea? When making that that tea strong I still get alittle bit of pleasant bitterness. like a more mature version of the Heng Li Chang Bulang.

r.e. 70's EoT loose leaf:I can see where you would get that. Maybe you mean ku wei kind of bitterness? The impression was more piney. Possibly the same in different proportions. My 1st try was pretty conservative. Small amount of leaf and short brew times. Just wanted to get a feeling for the tea. 2nd session will be with more copious amounts of leaf in my old pu pot with hopes of bringing out more intensity.

gasninja wrote:Biohorn. Did you pick up on any Bulang type bitterness from this tea? When making that that tea strong I still get alittle bit of pleasant bitterness. like a more mature version of the Heng Li Chang Bulang.

r.e. 70's EoT loose leaf:I can see where you would get that. Maybe you mean ku wei kind of bitterness? The impression was more piney. Possibly the same in different proportions. My 1st try was pretty conservative. Small amount of leaf and short brew times. Just wanted to get a feeling for the tea. 2nd session will be with more copious amounts of leaf in my old pu pot with hopes of bringing out more intensity.

Hmm...50's LB? Was that EoT?

I usually associate Ku wei with the transformative bitterness of a younger tea.This seems to be a different sort of experience. But I lack proper educatiuon in these sort of things.

The 50s tea was a 1950's lui an that was gifted to me. The cha qi from that tea was a force to be recond with. I had not been really excited with any of the younger lui an's that I have tried. But tea was an incredible expereience. I would love to try the 50's LB at EOT.

Also a heads up new aged samples at Houde Ba zhong huang Yin ,Snow mark, and a Yi Wu 2003 taiwan stored brick.I grabbed a sample of the ba zhong haung yin. Hobbes Review of this tea left me drooling (100+ brews).

Last edited by gasninja on Jan 31st, '12, 11:30, edited 1 time in total.

Just had a long tasting over the weekend that ended with a marathon session of a 1997 Yiwu from Longyunhao workshop (sheng). One of my friends in Qingdao has a pu'er shop, and unbeknowst to me, my husband had been searching with her for some bricks from the 90's. She had two she had been saving for her own personal collection, but she sent this one to us, probably in part because she thought a wedding anniversary was just romantic enough to have her part with it. So lucky to have good friends.

After almost every steeping, we got red in the face and started laughing and grinning. Trying to describe the taste and experience.. it was nearly impossible, even at the time.

We decided that the best description was that the tea tasted like the logic of a dream. We were utterly entranced with each cup, and yet efforts to put those tastes into words failed and turned into laughter. We were glad to be there, to be alive, and to be among friends. As great tea should be. Almost embarrassingly intimate, except that we all knew each other well (better, now).

Drinking in the warehouse district of Minneapolis, the view out our window contained both the beautiful city lights reflected on the river, and the ridiculous garish pink of Sex World. Yeesh- we thought to ourselves. What a waste of time. They could be drinking this tea with us, nourishing the soul and the senses. We ran off floating into the night around 1am.

Made me remember why I have a giant box way up in my closet of sheng pu'er that I don't pull down to drink. Most of the bricks are about 6 to 8 years old.. perfectly lovely and drinkable now... but now I've really had a taste of what they will be like in another 6 to 10 years. Indescribable- love.

Spoonvonstup wrote:Just had a long tasting over the weekend that ended with a marathon session of a 1997 Yiwu from Longyunhao workshop (sheng). One of my friends in Qingdao has a pu'er shop, and unbeknowst to me, my husband had been searching with her for some bricks from the 90's. She had two she had been saving for her own personal collection, but she sent this one to us, probably in part because she thought a wedding anniversary was just romantic enough to have her part with it. So lucky to have good friends.

After almost every steeping, we got red in the face and started laughing and grinning. Trying to describe the taste and experience.. it was nearly impossible, even at the time.

We decided that the best description was that the tea tasted like the logic of a dream. We were utterly entranced with each cup, and yet efforts to put those tastes into words failed and turned into laughter. We were glad to be there, to be alive, and to be among friends. As great tea should be. Almost embarrassingly intimate, except that we all knew each other well (better, now).

Drinking in the warehouse district of Minneapolis, the view out our window contained both the beautiful city lights reflected on the river, and the ridiculous garish pink of Sex World. Yeesh- we thought to ourselves. What a waste of time. They could be drinking this tea with us, nourishing the soul and the senses. We ran off floatinginto the night around 1am.

Made me remember why I have a giant box way up in my closet of sheng pu'er that I don't pull down to drink. Most of the bricks are about 6 to 8 years old.. perfectly lovely and drinkable now... but now I've really had a taste of what they will be like in another 6 to 10 years. Indescribable- love.

Did u by chance steep some magic 'luv' mushrooms @the same time? just curious...sounds like it from your description

There's a thread here about how fast YS was selling 2005 Douji Spring Red cakes last year, how it's a good deal>>>too young for this thread of 'about 10yrs or more' ...but I googled, and only found 1 mention by Oni about YS's supposedly great 2002 (better than 2000, and in same league as the sold out 2001) ...strange little mention or tasting notes on TC about that one as something with a little age, and not prohibitively expensive, available in 2 sample sizes to boot.

Since I'm bassackwards, I only like Pu that is still amber/yellow young---thick & smooth at the same time, with no bitterness or astringency at all (damn Imen, for tasting me on that one, which I can't recall what it was ), none of that red/dark/danky bandages/camphor stuff for me :p I don't even care for aged DC's, at least none of the ones TH sells...all nice enough, but I prefer younger, w/o that earthy aged quality.

Wh&yel-appr... I never know what you are talking about. You mentioned a 2002 tea at YS but forgot to mention some important stuff like the name of the factory and cake.

Today 90's xiaguan 100 gram tuocha. This tea is at a little bit of an awkward stage it is starting to be mellow but still has some edge from its youth. I don't think this tea has seen much if any wet storage. Their is allot of just plain old tea taste in this in the begining. It has pretty good durability and evolves alot over the sesion. A good every day drinker but will be allot better in a few years I think. My personal favorite of the five or so 90's 100 gram sheng toucha's on the western markett that I have tried.